Lasers have a wide variety of applications, ranging in use from optical drives, printers, scanners, communication systems, or pointing systems, all the way up to cutting and welding materials, measuring distance and/or speed, as well as in medical applications, such as laser surgery and skin treatments. Lasers may also be used in military applications for long-distance communications, marking targets, measuring target range, and some lasers are even being developed for use as defensive countermeasures.
In the production and operation of lasers, it is advantageous to be able to process and analyze data relative to the characteristics of a laser's output, specifically factors such as the radiant intensity, which is the energy over an angular area of the laser, the wavelength, spectral output of the laser, stability of the laser beam, and/or beam diameter can give valuable information to a laser user and/or manufacturer as to the quality of those aspects. This can allow increased productivity and repeatability of laser manufacture and use of the laser measurements and analysis of laser data can be assessed against application requirements to insure the laser being used meets the minimum requirements for the desired implementation. Further, it can be used during the manufacture of lasers to quality test products before they are shipped out and/or delivered to an end customer. Additionally, the use of analytical data relative to the laser beam can further assist in the design and manufacture of new lasers for as to yet unknown applications.
Current techniques and tools for the measurement and collection of such data, however, can be unreliable and/or suffer from low repeatability as current techniques typically include measurement techniques that cannot account for multiple variables simultaneously while recording data using computer data programs and/or a manual paper process to record data and process and analyze that those data that are collected. Current systems are therefore subject to error and suffer from low repeatability. These techniques can vary depending upon the person or entity performing the tests as each individual technique may vary in steps and/or analysis. Further, many of the current processes have not been subjected to peer-review or similar marketplace correction, therefore introducing a further aspect of unreliability into each individual technique.